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Did Castro regime officials assist Soccer star Diego Maradona in grooming and trafficking a 16-year-old-girl? Was this done to gain "Kompromat”?
The Independent reported on October 11, 2021 that "new video has surfaced adding weight to claims by a woman that football legend Diego Maradona seduced her when she was 16, gave her drugs and kept her locked in a hotel. Mavys Alvarez also claims that she was forced to get breast implants after being groomed and flown to Argentina from her native Cuba by Maradona’s associates, without the permission of her parents."
Mavys Alvarez (then 16), Fidel Castro, and Diego Maradona (then 40) in 2001
Cubans in 2001 were not allowed to travel outside of the island. Fidel Castro gave the authorization for the minor to travel with Maradona. According to Mavys Γlvarez, "the only way to travel was either with the permission of the parents, being at least 18 years old, or through Fidel. Maradona was able to get the authorization and she traveled out of the country in November 2001.
Diego Maradona, an international soccer legend, and enthusiastic supporter of the Castro dictatorship, could still have been targeted by the Castro regime with compromising photos to gain leverage over the sports celebrity.
The Cuban government's intelligence service has a history of carrying out "kompromat", called "honey traps" in English. "Kompromat” is "the Russian art of obtaining compromising material on prominent individuals in order to exert leverage over them," according to The Conversation. The Cuban intelligence service was formed, and trained by both the East German Stasi and the Soviet KGB, and have their own extensive history on this tactic, and below is an example that made the news.
Cuban spy Juan Pablo Roque honey trapped Ana Margarita Martinez into a false marriage.
BBC News article "US court exposes Cuban 'honey trap'" published on March 10, 2001 how a Cuban intelligence agent targeted a Cuban American woman and "used the marriage as a cover to pursue his spying activities for the Cuban Government" in the 1990s. " A court in the United States ordered the Cuban Government to pay $7 million in damages to a Miami woman who said she unknowingly married a Cuban intelligence agent," reported the BBC News in the same article.
Fidel Castro met with Jeffrey Epstein in Cuba in 2003.
British authorities had been aware of these practices and even after the Cold War in 1990 listed Cuba among “countries presenting a special security risk”, and among dangers cited "sexual involvement", another term for "honey trap." To achieve additional leverage the use of underage girls or boys (that do not appear underage) could be used to add a criminal element to extortion used by Havana. That Fidel Castro invited Jeffrey Epstein to Cuba in 2003 should raise concerns about what information the two could have traded in, and who would be further compromised.
Scott Carmichael, a U.S. counterintelligence officer in a 2007 article by The Washington Times said, “I believe that the Cuban Intelligence Service has penetrated the United States government to the same extent that the old East German intelligence service, the Stasi, once penetrated the West German government during the Cold War (“DIA official warns about Cuban spies,” March 14). "Indeed, according to an 2004 indictment that was unsealed in 2013, Montes herself was recruited—perhaps even before she joined the DIA—by Marta Rita Velazquez, then a U.S. State Department employee (“Charge in Cuban spy case unsealed,” Associated Press, April 23, 2013)." Castro’s intelligence services share information with U.S. adversaries, "including China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, among others," The Hill OpEd by Sean Durns cited Scott Carmichael on December 5, 2016.
This episode regarding Diego Maradona should serve as a reminder of the tactics Castro agents use against both friends and foes to gain leverage, and that it is dangerous to underestimate them. Cuba in 2021 remains "a special security risk."
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